Parents sue schools over yoga program

US correspondent for Fairfax Media

Classroom peace: First-grader Miriam Ruiz practises her yoga at a school in Encinitas, California. Photo: The New York Times

School officials in California are fighting a lawsuit brought by a conservative organisation on behalf of a group of Christian parents to prevent the district from teaching primary school children yoga, which they claim is a form of indoctrination.

It is a case that brings together some of the most combustible ingredients in American public life - schools, religion and the First Amendment, which enshrines freedom of religion and separates church and state - and is being closely watched by public institutions throughout the country that have begun to teach or allow the practice of Ashtanga yoga.

The dispute began late last year, when the Encinitas public school district in San Diego introduced yoga as part of its mandated physical education curriculum.

Though many schools in the US have taught yoga, it is thought this is the first district to formalise it across the board. Apparently aware of the potential for controversy, the district stripped from the course the traditional chants and Sanskrit words associated with the practice, and provided alternatives to children whose parents chose to opt out.

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''This is 21st-century PE. It's physical. It's strength-building. It increases flexibility but it also deals with stress reduction and focusing, which kickball doesn't do,'' the Encinitas superintendent, Timothy Baird, told the Associated Press.

Though most parents support the program, which was fully implemented last month, the district's precautions were not enough for some. Complainants point out the program is funded by a $US533,000 ($A522,000) grant from the Jois Foundation, a non-profit group whose board of directors includes the son of the late Indian instructor Krishna Pattabhi Jois, whose teachings popularised Ashtanga yoga in the West.

And they take no comfort from the knowledge that the program is being used in a study by Virginia and San Diego universities, which will analyse data on the children's resting heart rates.

One of the parents opposed is Mary Eady, who pulled her first-grade son out of the classes, saying an opening sequence she witnessed in a class had the connotations of sun worship and opposed her Christian belief that only God should be worshipped. ''What they are teaching is inherently spiritual, it's just inappropriate therefore in our public schools,'' she told AP.

The non-profit National Centre for Law & Policy launched the lawsuit last week on behalf of Stephen and Jennifer Sedlock and their children, students in the Encinitas Union School District.

The dispute also reveals much about the blurry front lines in America's ongoing culture wars.

Many liberal progressives live in the school district, while Ms Eady, a devout Christian, works for TruthXchange, a self-described ''think tank'' concerned about the threat of ''neo-paganism''.

Jennifer Sedlock is a Christian motivational speaker whose website offers her services in speaking on topics including ''Celebrating Christ-Centred Holidays'' and ''Moving Forward in Faith''.

And the National Centre for Law & Policy - an organisation whose slogan ''Faith, Family, Freedom'' appears beneath an American eagle icon atop its website - describes its aim as ''the protection and promotion of religious freedom, the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, parental rights and other civil liberties''.

Lawyer and founder of the centre Dean Broyles believes this is what the yoga courses represent: ''EUSD's Ashtanga yoga program represents a serious breach of the public trust. This is, frankly, the clearest case of the state trampling on the religious-freedom rights of citizens that I have personally witnessed in my 18 years of practice as a constitutional attorney.''

His lawsuit notes that Indiana University religious studies professor Candy Gunther Brown has found the program is pervasively religious, having its roots in Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist and metaphysical beliefs and practices.